susanna clarke – Catherine Thoms

Lit Chat Vol. 33 — January/February in Review

Pyramid of book cover images with Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke, and Audition by Katie Kitamura on the bottom; House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas and The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron in the middle; Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas on top.

Hi friends,

I started 2025 with a really clear idea of what I wanted to do with my time and my brain. I had a strong drive to learn, stretch, and achieve via a self-imposed curriculum. And I enjoyed it! I’m glad I did it. But come January 2026, I needed a rest.

For me, rest is letting myself luxuriate in 500+ page books that take well over a month to read. I gravitate towards these (mostly fantasy) books during times of hibernation and withdrawal, protracted escapes from the rest of the world.

I think I’m branding 2026 as the year of the long read. The project read, if you will. I’m currently in a book club to read Larry McMurtry’s western epic Lonesome Dove over the next few months. I desperately need to return to (read: binge) the Wolf Hall trilogy. I’d also like to finally tackle some Dostoyevsky, and maybe we’ll return to some Proust in the summer? Who’s to say!

For the past three years, I’ve shied away from longer books because I was afraid they’d leave me with not enough to write about here on a monthly cadence. That’s not interesting to me anymore! This year, we’re eliminating that stress. As a result, these updates may be a little less frequent until I feel like mixing it up again. You’ll hear from me when you hear from me, but I’m always around if you want to chat.

Speaking of, we’ve got some catching up to do. Shall we?

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THE FOUNDATION:

Book cover images for Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke, and Audition by Katie Kitamura

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — V.E. Schwab

I wanted to love this one! I really did. Chalk it up to bad timing, that I happened to read two vampire books more or less concurrently. I usually enjoy Schwab’s writing and was intrigued by the three different eras her characters belonged to: 2019 Boston, Regency-era London, and sixteenth-century Spain. However, I don’t think the length worked in this one’s favor. When each of the POVs are novel-length in their own right, the moment when they finally convene needs to feel deservedly momentous. This one kind of just devolved into an anticlimax about grief and toxic relationships, and I don’t think it brought anything particularly new and exciting to the canon of vampire novels. Speaking of…

The Vampire Lestat — Anne Rice

I first read Interview with the Vampire six or seven years ago, and absolutely loved the luxurious, sensual campiness with which Rice essentially defined the modern vampire novel. Once you’ve read it, everything else (unfortunately, Bury Our Bones included) just feels like an imitation. That said, this did take me closer to four months to get through because, as fascinating a character as Lestat is, this nearly 600-page book is more autobiography than true plot. This made it easy to put down and pick back up during the different eras of Lestat, but didn’t make me want to read nonstop to the exclusion of all else. We do get some cool vampire origin lore in this volume, though, and I do intend to finish the rest of this series eventually.

The Wood at Midwinter — Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke is a delight at whatever she does, be it a 1,000-page fantasy doorstop or a 64-page fairy tale. I would read her grocery lists, but in their absence, The Wood at Midwinter is an exquisitely illustrated short story about a strange girl and her affinity for the woods who speak back to her like a character in their own right. This is a perfect snow day book for adults and children alike—exactly the length of a cup of hot chocolate.

Audition — Katie Kitamura

Listen, it’s been two months and I still have no idea how to feel about this book. My first response after finishing it in one sitting was just ???, and my second response was to message some friends who I knew had read it:

screenshot of a discord message that says "I can't decide if it's genius or obnoxious. This one requires some stewing. — spoiler alert: still stewing!

I don’t even know how to talk about it without spoiling it? On the surface, it’s about an actress and a young man who claims to be her son, the emotional fallout that ensues, and its effects on her performance in an upcoming play. But there’s a twist! And the twist has you questioning everything you’ve read up until then, the reliability of each character, and the reliability of the narrative itself. It lands in a sufficiently WTF place that answers absolutely zero questions, which is why it’s either genius or obnoxious. I think I’ve landed on possibly both? But I’m still kind of annoyed. If you’ve read this one, I want to hear from you!!

SOLID SUPPORTS:

House of Earth and Blood — Sarah J. Maas

I have officially reached the point in my SJM reading journey where I’m just committed to reading everything she’s written. After finishing the Throne of Glass series in January (more on that to come, dw), I couldn’t resist the temptation of yet another 900-page book on my Kindle to take with me on a trip to Florida.

HOEAB is the first book in the Crescent City series, and I’ll admit I’m not vibing with the urban fantasy elements quite as much as I was the classic high fantasy of Throne of Glass. There’s something just kind of wrong to me about angels using cell phones and watching TV. This one, however, scores points for being written for an adult audience, and I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly it sucked me in despite having to learn yet another new world’s worth of vocabulary, geography, and lore. This is another series I’m committed to seeing through to the end this year. Probably sooner rather than later, if Libby keeps delivering the e-books this fast.

The Artist’s Way — Julia Cameron

Enough creative friends of mine had been threatening to do The Artist’s Way for long enough that in December, we actually started, and in February, I finished! Twelve weeks of consistent morning pages, Artist’s Dates, and challenging my relationship with art, creativity, and the universe’s role in all of it.

I think my biggest takeaways were:

How much calmer I feel in my day when I spend the first fifteen minutes dumping my brain out into my fancy Italian leather journal like Dumbledore’s pensieve.
How fun it is to go to the movies by myself and not share my popcorn.
How much more likely I am to get something done if I a) write it down and b) tell other people about it.

This journey also helped me recommit to my creative writing and to the possibility of sharing it with the world in a big way (I’ve been submitting to literary magazines for the first time in like six years), which I’ll admit is very scary! And hard to open myself back up to rejection in that way! But if I can be brave then so can you, because Julia Cameron says so.

THE TIPPY TOP:

Book cover image for Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas

Kingdom of Ash — Sarah J. Maas

I think as a general rule, if I’m going to invest upwards of four thousand pages of my reading time to a single series, then the last book is actually legally obligated to be good enough for the top spot. Fortunately for SJM, Kingdom of Ash was.

This is the seventh book in a series, so at this point it’s almost impossible to discuss without spoilers. I’ve talked in previous posts about how much I was enjoying the ways the geographical world of the novel continued to expand, and how satisfying it was when characters from different corners of the map finally teamed up. But in finishing (and starting) yet another SJM series, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the romantasy genre as a whole, especially in response to Daniel Yadin’s essay in The Drift.

A significant portion of Yadin’s essay about the recent rise of romantasy in pop culture goes for shock value in quoting some of the steamier sex scenes and using them as a lens to explore the representation of female freedom and sexual liberation, often at the cost of literary quality. What I think he dismisses in his argument about how fate and overdetermination weaken the characters’ individual agency is the fact that said overdetermination is…kind of the whole point?

Yes, we come to these books for an escape, but the main fantasy is not the magic or the dragons or the “unfathomably hung” love interests. The real fantasy is the guarantee that somehow, even when all signs point towards certain doom, everything is still going to work out okay. The hands of fate are always working for the good: the war will be won, the lover found true and whole, the friendships strengthened and preserved. In a reality of horrific news cycles where we are reminded every day that absolutely none of this is promised to us, isn’t that kind of certainty the wildest fantasy of all?

Anyway, that’s just a teaser of my full rant (The Drift can commission me for a full rebuttal if they want), but I’ll end by saying these books are also just really fun to read! And for what it’s worth, Throne of Glass is the least raunchy, as it’s technically YA. Safe to share and enjoy with both teens and grandmas.

Well, friends, thanks for hanging and for bearing with me as I figure out what I want this newsletter (and my life in general) to look like in 2026. If you want to chat more about any of these books, or want to commit to a buddy read of Infinite Jest (I think I’m kidding…maybe), drop a comment or hit me up in any of the other usual places.

And until next time, happy reading!
❤ Catherine

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Welcome to the blog home of my new literary newsletter, Lit Chat! I’m still figuring out what Lit Chat will look like long-term, but at least for now, I’m committed to sending out a monthly Dance Moms-inspired ranked pyramid of all the books I’ve read that month. Click the button below to subscribe to Lit Chat on Substack and get next month’s pyramid straight to your inbox.

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The blog version of this newsletter is a bit longer and includes a bonus bottom tier of Honorable Mention reads that didn’t make the email. Scroll down to check out my thoughts and find your next read!

The Top:

The Door — Magda Szabó, translated by Len Rix

September was honestly a fire reading month and this was an especially difficult decision, but this translation of a Hungarian modern classic has stuck with me in ways that I absolutely did not expect. Initially published in 1987 and translated into English in 2005, it follows the inexplicable relationship between a writer in postwar Hungary and her eccentric housekeeper, Emerence, over a span of more than twenty years.

Emerence is an old, intractable peasant woman who chooses who she works for and at which hours and lets no one but the narrator’s dog into her own home, all while tending to the needs of an entire community with impossible strength and selflessness. Alternating between being charmed and completely exasperated with Emerence’s secrets and strange ways, the narrator becomes obsessed with knowing the true Emerence, and so, vicariously, does the reader. This novel explores the politics of love, shame, and pride with the same unflinching sense of innate moral justice that Emerence wields when making her pronouncements on humanity and the authenticity of art, cutting to the quick with searingly brilliant honesty. Reading this book sent me into a spiral which I still have not recovered from, about how many incredible books I’ll never get to read because I only read passably in two languages.

Solid Supports:

The Love Hypothesis — Ali Hazelwood

Turns out, I am as much a sucker for fake dating as I am for large, brooding love interests! Especially with the academia setting, I could mainline this shit straight into my veins. I thought it was a little cheesy how self-aware the book was of its genre and tropes (Olive, babe, we know you know you’re in a rom-com, calm down), but I ate it up nonetheless. Shoutout to my friend Megan for pressing this book into my hands after a glass (or three) of wine—which is, in fact, my preferred method of giving and receiving book recommendations.

The Children’s Book — A.S. Byatt

I bought this book one day in August when my grumpy little daily walk took me to the bookstore (not sure how that keeps happening). It has every element of a comfort book for me: manor homes in the English countryside, garden parties, fairy tales, delicious secrets and Edwardian-era scandals up the wazoo. Plus, it was over 800 pages, which meant I got to savor this one over a cup of tea in bed every morning for over a month. Forever grateful to the Staff Picks wall at Greenlight Bookstore, which has not failed me yet. Consider this your monthly reminder to shop indie, folks!

The Foundation:

Central Places — Delia Cai

Delia had the whole room rapt when she read from the first chapter of her debut novel as part of Rax King’s Girl City reading series back in July, so of course, I jumped on the chance to read a full advance e-copy (thx Netgalley!). Central Places is about Audrey, a young Chinese-American woman returning to her central Illinois hometown for the first time in eight years to introduce her very white, very New York fiancé to her immigrant parents. (Spoiler alert: it does not go well!) The unique angst of a former Midwestern teen was embarrassingly relatable, as was Audrey’s struggle to reconcile the life she’s created for herself with the one she grew up with and thought she left behind. Keep an eye out for this one in January 2023!

True Biz — Sara Nović

One of my favorite reading experiences is when a book teaches you something about a place or culture that you know absolutely nothing about, and True Biz did that for me with the Deaf community. The book follows the intertwined narratives of a Deaf high school’s headmaster and two of its students, interspersed with textbook excerpts teaching common ASL signs and exploring topics of Deaf history and culture. This was a smart and heartfelt exploration of language, connection, and identity, and I learned a whole lot, which I always appreciate.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle — Shirley Jackson

I used to get this one mixed up with I Capture the Castle, but let me tell you—no longer! If anything, this is the weird, witchy half-sister to Dodie Smith’s classic. Told from the perspective of a nearly feral young woman whose whole family except her older sister and elderly uncle were mysteriously poisoned six years prior, the tranquility of their reclusive lives comes to an abrupt end when an unknown cousin comes knocking on their mansion door. This was my final read of September and a fantastic kick-off to an upcoming month of spooky reads.

Honorable Mention:

A History of Present Illness — Anna DeForest

This brief novel is written from the perspective of a young woman in medical school and interweaves her educational experiences with her personal life and past trauma. Medicine as a field of study has always fascinated me, but there was a level of distance between the narrator and the reader which—though I believe it was intentional as a thematic representation of the necessary distance that must be kept between one’s work and one’s private self as a doctor—just made me feel like I was being kept at arm’s length as a reader.

The Heroes of Olympus (Books 1 & 2) — Rick Riordan

I spent the summer listening to the original Percy Jackson series on audiobook, because I’d never read them before and because I like having something in my ears when I leave the house that doesn’t require too much attention. Let me tell you, it’s been a delight. Having finished the original series, I’m onto the next spin-off series, The Heroes of Olympus, which features new characters alongside the old familiar ones as the heroes face down their most ancient and terrible enemies yet. These books are goofy and light-hearted, but I like to think they’re teaching me a little something about Greek (and now Roman!) mythology as well.

Piranesi — Susanna Clarke

Listen, I love this haunting, brilliant, bizarre little book. I love it so much that it got a rare re-read this month ( I read it for the first time about a year ago), but because this was my second go-around, it doesn’t feel right to bump it up on the pyramid above books that were first-timers. That said, if you like mazes, alternate worlds, and haunting examinations of the self, READ THIS BOOK. It didn’t win the Women’s Fiction Prize last year for nothing.

And that’s a wrap for September! Drop a comment if you want to chat about any of these or leave me a recommendation for October! And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter below to get the email version right in your inbox next month.